2221. The care of bees seems more naturally to belong to gardening than the keeping of ice; because their situation is naturally in the garden, and their produce is a vegetable salt. The garden-bee is found in a wild state in most parts of the globe, in swarms or governments; but never in groups of governments so near together as in a bee-house, which is an artificial and unnatural contrivance to save trouble, and injurious to the insect directly as the number placed together. Thus, if ten acres are sufficient to maintain two hives, a hundred acres will be required to maintain twenty; but while, in the former case, the hives being placed in the centre of the ten acres, each bee need not perform a longer journey than two hundred yards; in the latter, the colony being similarly situated as to the hundred acres, the average journey for each insect will be nearly a mile. Hence, independently of other considerations, one disadvantage of congregating hives in bee-houses or apiaries. The advantages are, greater facility in protecting from heat, cold, or thieves, and greater facilities of examining their condition and progress. Independently of their honey, bees are considered as useful in gardens, by aiding in the impregnation of flowers. For this purpose, a hive is sometimes placed in a cherry-house, and sometimes in peach-houses; or the position of the hive is in the front or end wall of such houses, so as the body of the hive may be half in the house and half in the wall, with two outlets for the bees, �one into the house, and the other into the open air. By this arrangement, the bees can be admitted to the house and open air alternately, and excluded from either at pleasure.
